Excerpt from Little Maid of Arcady Yet not far from this lovely spot, around the shoulder of one of the great hills that guard it, is another and far different scene - a mountain gorge, deep, wild, almost savage, across one side of which a breath of the world passes two or three times a day in the form of a railroad train, speeding from one centre of civilization to another. It was this gorge which was the scene of an accident, famous even yet in the annals of horror. A fearful place for an accident, with its precipitous sides, and far below the level of the track its stately trees look ing like merest shrubs a terrible place for life and death to clash together in one awful second: for eyes to take their last look on existence, for death sobs to be given and throbs of mortal agonyborne, the whole of which God only knows; a horrible place for men, women and children to be blent to gether in one fiery destruction, one mass of quiv ering, suffering humanity; for hearts, careless or careworn, happy or sad, to be hurled in one dread moment from time into eternity! It is a place even yet pregnant with suggestions of all the dark anguish of which it was the scene; and old rail way officials still speak of the accident as one of the most terrible on record still shudder as they cast a hurried glance from the car windows over that precipice, down which the engine plunged like some mad, sentient thing. Ten years had elapsed since that plunge was taken; and the sunshine of another August day, as lovely as the one now long Since passed, was ly ing over the mountains and valleys, bathing the summits of the first in glory and leaving the last in soft shadow as the afternoon advanced, when two young people entered the gorge and made their way directly to the spot where the accident had occurred, - that is, where the train had been hurled in its awful fall. N 0 sign marking the place now remained, but there seemed not the least doubt or hesitation on the part of these two. Without. Exchanging a word they advanced, until presently saying to each other Here i they paused by a mass of granite that, detached from the heights above in some bygone convulsion of nature, now lay clothed with moss and half buried in tall ferns. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.